For some reason, when talking about pest control, the first
thing that comes to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's (R) mind is
immigration policy. Griping to WMAL's The Morning Majority on Wednesday about a Washington, D.C. law
on pest control that he said signals "a triumph of animal rights over human
health," Cuccinelli complained that the law is "worse than our immigration
policy — you can't break up rat families."

BRIAN WILSON (HOST): Standing by
on the line, just called in for a moment is Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney
General of the United, of—not the United States—of the great Commonwealth of
Virginia, who knows a thing or two apparently about rats. What is it that you
know about rats that the rest of us don't know?

CUCCINELLI: Well, I saw the same
rat story about D.C. that y'all have been talking about. What you may not
know is last year in its finite wisdom, the D.C. City Council passed a new
law — a triumph of animal rights over human health — where those pest control
people you suggested they bring in aren't allowed to kill the rat. They have to relocate the rat and not only
that, that's actually not the worst part: They cannot break up the families of
the rat. Now, as actual experts in pest control will tell you, if you don't
move an animal about 25 miles, it'll come back. And so, what's the
solution to that? Well, cross a river.

BRYAN NEHMAN (HOST): Send them over
to Virginia, that's right.

CUCCINELLI: So now guess why I care
about that sort of thing?

MARY KATHARINE HAM (HOST): I bet!

CUCCINELLI: Anyway, it is worse than our immigration policy — you
can't break up rat families. Or raccoons and all the rest and you
can't even kill them. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Listen:

This isn't the first time a conservative politician has made
a connection between human beings and vermin. Last spring a Kansas state
representative suggested controlling undocumented immigration by "shooting these
immigrating feral hogs" from helicopters, and in August a GOP attorney
general from Nebraska compared raccoons to welfare
recipients. In January 2010, South Carolina's Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer
made the case against aiding the poor by likening federal assistance to feeding
stray animals, saying that if you feed strays "they
breed." U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) compared undocumented immigration to
allowing "any kind of vagrant,
or animal" into your home, and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) suggested using an
electrified border fence because "we do this with livestock
all the time."

In the context of Cuccinelli's career-long unabashed praise for harsh anti-immigrant
measures, his readiness to associate immigration policy with pest control
doesn't reflect positively on him. As a state senator, he once championed a
bill to deny unemployment benefits to legal immigrants that don't speak English, and as attorney general he supported
Arizona-style racial profiling.

It's worth noting that the very
basis of the attorney general's comments is false. D.C.'s Wildlife Protection
Act of 2009 explicitly
excludes "commensal rodents," including both rats and mice, from
protections extended to other wildlife.